--- > The basic mechanism of chat control is to require the manufacturers of messaging apps and devices to use artificial intelligence to scan images and messages before they are encrypted, check them against government databases of known illegal images, etc., and report any suspicious ones to law enforcement. Since this would be done before encryption, end-to-end encryption would essentially be meaningless. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j17d2r8kq9hq51404da8s5kg) --- > Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are vocal about their concerns about so-called "going dark" - criminals running rampant by becoming invisible to the outside world through encrypted communications - but the latest proposal exempted intelligence agencies, the military, police and some EU ministries from the chat controls. It was law enforcement that would go dark, hidden from the scrutiny of the real world. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j17d46yekzf6e11cr0sftz87) --- > Aside from being a serious invasion of privacy, this type of censorship is notoriously ineffective at preventing child abuse in the first place. There are too many so-called false positives, which detect such as images that are neither child pornography nor anything else. ... Even if the accuracy rate were truly 99%, a billion messages would still be false positives. That would leave law enforcement with a huge amount of misinformation and little time to follow up on real leads and save real children. And since it is only illegal to disobey chat controls, real sex offenders will use illegal encryption services, etc. with impunity. --- > it is not government censorship itself, such as chat control, that I personally fear. It is the self-censorship it causes. When people feel that they are being monitored, they begin to self-censor. Eventually, even truly private interactions, such as standing around talking, will come under the scrutiny of "self-surveillance," which will eventually lead to self-regulation of thought, let alone speech. To be deprived of private conversation is to be fundamentally deprived of freedom of speech, and ultimately to undermine the very foundation of democratic society. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j17d83vw89h0kjyhb08c9p56) ---